Profile

Brian’s research interests focus on identity issues in returned study abroad students, specifically how an international education experience affects the returnee’s sense of national identity toward his or her home country.  This interest is not only a professional one, but also a personal one as he is still working on this issue more than two decades after his first international experience as a high school exchange student in Finland.  He enjoyed the first year in Finland so much that he studied at the University of Helsinki with the help of a scholarship from Finland’s Ministry of Education.  He also participated in two intensive summer language programs in Moscow, Russia and was a research fellow at the Estonian Institute for International and Social Studies in Tallinn, Estonia.

Brian comes to the LLC program with a Master’s degree in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a concentration in Soviet and post-Soviet domestic politics.  His earlier research focused on the politics of national identity in the former USSR and in the Baltic States, with a focus on Estonian citizenship policies.  His interest in Soviet nationality issues was inspired during an undergraduate seminar at Indiana University, where he earned a B.A. in Political Science and Slavic Languages and Cultures.  He has presented his research on the ethnic dynamic in Estonian parliamentary elections at the American Political Science Association, and has also co-authored articles on Soviet-East European relations, Soviet nationality policies and the politics of economic reform in the former Soviet Union.

Brian is currently UMBC’s Coordinator of Study Abroad, a position he has held for the past three years.  He previously worked as Assistant Director of Study Abroad at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he managed the UIUC exchange programs in the United Kingdom and Australia, and advised students studying in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.  When not promoting international education opportunities for UMBC students, Brian is an avid runner who competes regularly in half and full marathons, most recently in Ottawa, Helsinki and Washington.

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News

Brian Souders, a cohort 6 student, and Rebekah de Wit, a 2004 graduate of the LLC Program, will co-present a poster session at the annual conference of NAFSA: The Association of International Educators, in Montreal in May.  The title of their session is "U.S. Students Abroad in Britain: A Critical Look at Learning." If you wish to learn more about the session, please contact Brian at souders@umbc.edu or Rebekah at kdewit1@umbc.edu.

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